I see in the current National Review that you are continuing your
campaign to declare all-out war on Iraq as soon as possible to destroy the
regime of Saddam Hussein once and for all. This time you make the case for
counter-proliferation of nuclear weapons and reckon we must start with
Baghdad. Your "Delay or Die?" column is not only vigorously argued,
but replete with evidence that you have read a great deal about the politics
of the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular. You know I disagree with
you emphatically on Iraq -- even to the point of believing U.S. behavior
toward the people of Iraq over the last decade contributed to the political
terrorism of September 11. So let's put that aside and simply focus on the
points you make about nuclear proliferation -- about Saddam's attempts to
build a nuclear arsenal in the past and the likelihood he will succeed if
given enough time.

The point that got my attention in particular, Rich, is your mention of Khidir
Hamza, the Iraqi scientist who defected and wrote about Saddam's clandestine
nuke program. He wrote how Saddam used the presumption that just because Iraq
signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968, and was being subjected to
inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that there was "a
presumption of innocence." You quote Hamza as writing: "Few of
Iraq's suppliers -- or the IAEA itself -- ever bothered to ask a simple
question: Why would Iraq, with the second-largest oil reserves in the world,
want to generate electricity by burning uranium?"

It is a good question: Why were people so stupid in 1981? Of course, you seem
to say, he was scheming even then to build an atomic bomb with which to
terrorize his neighbors! I must tell you, though, that in those years, when
the price of oil was $35 a barrel, it was conventional wisdom that the
world was rapidly running out of oil. You may be too young to remember,
but in the 1970s, the smartest people in the United States believed that to be
the case. Henry Kissinger, who was said to be the smartest man in the world,
thought so. President Gerald Ford thought so. President Jimmy Carter was sure
that was the case and he turned down the thermostat at the White House to
provide an example of conservation. The Club of Rome, which assembled the
leading Malthusian scientists of the day, concluded that Mother Earth had been
bountiful from the beginning of time up to this point of history, but from now
on would be stingy. I'd been hired by The Wall Street Journal in
January 1972 to write editorials and a year later, when OPEC quadrupled the
oil price, I wound up writing the energy editorials. If you check with Bob
Bartley, he will assure you that we were the laughing stock of the American
Political Establishment. That's because we argued the price went up not
because oil became scarce, but because paper dollars became too plentiful when
President Richard Nixon left the gold standard in 1971.

The mania about everyone freezing in the dark unless we did something extended
to the Council on Foreign Relations and its chairman, David Rockefeller,
chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank and grandson of the Standard Oil Rockefeller.
It was David who financed purchase of the coal fields of West Virginia that
would provide the energy alternative when the oil spigot ran dry. It was his
brother Nelson Rockefeller, President Ford's Vice President, who became the
most aggressive advocate of having Uncle Sam subsidize synthetic fuels
out of the West Virginia coal fields. This was in order to satisfy the
environmentalists that all that smelly coal would not pollute the atmosphere.
The Rockefellers also became supporters of the all the official Greenie
organizations, which also pushed synfuels, whereby the taxpayers would take
all that smelly coal off the hands of the Rockefellers. It wasn't just Rocky.
Phillips Petroleum bought up a zillion acres of lignite fields in West Texas,
knowing lignite is a good source of the uranium that would be needed to fuel
the nuclear power plants when the oil ran out! It was an expensive hedge. They
still have not touched the lignite as the world has far more oil reserves
today than it had back then. The supply-siders at the WSJournal
congratulated themselves on being right, but it turns out that everyone hates
an I-told-you-so.

Why did Iraq become a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty? You should
ask yourself, Rich. It is a good question. The only reason countries signed
up, one after another, is that if they promised to be good, the IAEA would
provide them with the technology necessary to build a nuclear power plant!!
Having signed the treaty in 1968 and rolling in dough in 1980, Iraq could
hedge the same way Iran did, selling expensive oil and buying cheap power
plants. What you may not realize, Rich, is that the power plant Iraq was
building in 1981 at Osiraq, just outside Baghdad, was not the kind of plant
that would produce fissile materials out of which atomic bombs could be
constructed. The French had built a similar plant for Israel, which never
signed the NPT because it did not need the technology. Israel used the plant
to produce power. It got the uranium for its weapons of mass destruction from
South Africa. The IAEA inspection of the Osiraq plant was on the up-and-up.
Then two months before it was going to be cranked up to send power into
Baghdad, Israel decided that it did not want Iraq to have a nuclear power
plant and bombed it to bits, without so much as a by-your-leave. The whole
world condemned Israel for this blatant act not-so-much of aggression as it
was political terrorism. I know my Jewish friends do not like that kind of
talk, but let's be honest. There were no apologies and Uncle Sam sided with
Israel in the UN Security Council so Israel did not even have to pay for the
damage and deaths. Not a brass farthing, an Israeli official announced.

Now it is true that after Osiraq, Saddam decided No-More-Mr. Nice Guy, and
began his clandestine project to match Israel bomb-for-bomb, just in case it
came to that. It was in this period, while Iraq warred with Iran, that the
IAEA was only shown the legitimate operations in Iraq. Since the end of the
Gulf War, though, after the UN inspectors learned about the clandestine
program, the IAEA protocols have been tightened. Nobody talks about this
openly, Rich, but if you check you will find that IAEA inspectors can go
anywhere they wish in Iran or Iraq, if they suspect a clandestine nuke
program, and they will be taken for a look-see. An IAEA team did such an
inspection in Iraq early this year and has at least twice checked out
suspicions in Iran. It is easy to hide a chem/bio research facility, but
because a nuke plant requires so much infrastructure, so much electric power,
it is practically impossible to hide. In other words, it may not be necessary
to bomb the Islamic world to bits to be safe from atomic attack. Quite the
opposite might work. Maybe we can get Ariel Sharon, even at this late date, to
pony up the money to rebuild Osiraq. That would be a nice gesture, wouldn't
it?